Walter Franklin Lansil´s earliest compositions depicted ships in the coastal waters of New England and he continued to paint these ships in the harbors of Maine and Massachusetts throughout his career. In the foreground of Tallships, Lansil depicted working craft: a two-masted brig and a sloop in golden sunlight anchored offshore with rowboats alongside perhaps unloading goods or fish. Other ships, docked and under sail, dot the background.

By the time Lansil painted New England vessels, the great age of the "tall ship" was already in decline. Interestingly, in the Boston College acquisition, he chose to ignore the progress of the contemporary steam age in favor of the more romantic era of the large sail ships.

Artist/Attribution:

A highly regarded marine painter in his day, Walter Lansil was born in Bangor, Maine in 1846. He studied painting with portraitist Jeremiah P. Hardy in Bangor and, by the early 1870s, he had moved to Boston. Beginning in 1874, he exhibited regularly at the Boston Art Club. Lansil was elected a member of the Bangor Art Association in 1876 and the Boston Art Club a year later. From 1878-1892, he exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York. In 1883, he went to France to study with Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888) and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (d. 1911) at the Academie Julian. While abroad, Lansil also traveled to Holland, Belgium, Germany and Italy, apparently spending extended periods in Dordrecht and in Venice. Initially, Lansil´s subjects focused on the waters and coastlines near his native Maine and adopted Boston. After his European sojourn, Lansil added Dutch and Venetian themes to his oeuvre. One critic has suggested that Lansil may have been influenced by Felix Ziem (1821-1911), a contemporary French artist who worked in Venice and is considered to be a precursor of the Impressionists in his discovery of Venetian subject matter (both Monet and Renoir would later delight in the ever-changing light and color of the city). Lansil´s broadly applied brushstrokes and fascination with capturing the transient effects of light on water are closer in spirit to Ziem´s work than to the more academic style of the artists under whom he studied at the Academie Julian. At some point in his career, Lansil also took up watercolor; his subjects in this medium echo those of his oils.

Provenance:

Gift of Dr. & Mrs. Gerald F. Hogan, December 1986.
Previously hung in More Hall, Boston College 1/26/89.

Bibliography/Literature:

"American Artists An Illustrated Sketch of Walter Franklin Lansil, the Great Marine Painter," anonymous, undated article (no citation) in artists´s files at Boston Public Library, pp. 166-173.

deSoissons, S.C., Boston Artists, Boston, 1894, pp. 55-57.